Monday, June 10, 2013

Even though I trust Obama far more than Bush, I don't trust him or the hundreds of other people with access to total information about everything (slight exaggeration) to use it sparingly and only for good. And while I don't like to assume facts for which we have no evidence, the recent disclosures of government spying seem unlikely to be the only spying that's done on the general public. No abuses of the information have been disclosed, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened, and given enough time and enough people with access to the information, we can assume it will happen at some point.

What exactly to do about it seems far less clear to me. And as much as we environmentalists wished that the public knew more and cared more about our issues, we do a lot better than the civil liberties people do with the public.

One aspect of this issue is that the private corporate panopticon isn't much better than the government one. I've made a distinction in the past between the "reasonable" libertarianism that I sometimes identify with versus "simplistic" libertarianism that sees liberty in black and white terms. This is another case where simplistic libertarians, who see no threat from corporate information-gathering while acknowledging threats from government, just don't make sense. That corporate information is too ripe a target for government not to try to get.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Ever since the french secret service (yes there is one) switched to linux (or something like that, not off-the-shelf linux anyway), I've been sceptical of security on my computers. I went as far as not using the netbanks at all, or never buying anything over the net. Now I've broken this habit. But anyway, this is somewhat a problem for net-based business in Europe, and I guess the fines MS has got from the EU arise from the same suspicions (why should I tell an american intelligence service what I want to buy as an european from europe made by europeans for european use only for a price that's only available for europeans in europe).

I'd like a comment from Julian Assange about this, and he even doesn't need to tell how he organised wikileaks.

Encrypt anything you care about. Use SHA256 or better. If you're engaged in illegal activities, assume that anything you put up on google docs etc is available to law enforcement. Be aware that web servers keep access logs. Etc etc.

I'm all for increased privacy laws, or even a decreased patriot act ...

I really can't understand the shock and awe at this, when it's just a natural result of over thirty years of gradual backdoor neoliberal rule. Look up the East India Company and read some Dickens: your classical liberal's/neoliberal's/anarcho-capitalist's/pseudolibertarian's notion of how the universe was always meant to be.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.